Servant Songs on Capitol Hill

Servant Songs on Capitol Hill

2nd and C Street, S.E. — “I want to officially welcome you home,” Fr. William Byrne, pastor of St. Peter’s Catholic Church, said to members of Congress and their staff at an ecumenical, bipartisan prayer service this morning. “Whether you realize it or not, you are at the parish of Saint Peter’s when you are at your desk” on the Hill, he said, welcoming all.

Advertisement

Advertisement

The parish, whose motto is “To be a tangible manifestation of Christ in the community,” is just steps away from the Capitol. When the House is in session, congressmen join those worshiping at daily morning and afternoon weekday Masses.

It was a truly ecumenical gathering: Not only were John Boehner and Nancy Pelosi — both Catholics — there, but Eric Cantor, who is Jewish, and Keith Ellison, who is Muslim, both read during the prayer service, as well as a host of Protestants, from James Clyburn to James Lankford (Okla.).

Congress struck a humble note this morning as Representative Clyburn prayed that “we walk by faith and not by sight,” asking God to “order our steps and clothe our thoughts.”

Advertisement

The service posed all sorts of challenges, as readings and reflections focused on the call to serve. Fr. Patrick J. Conroy, a Jesuit priest, who serves as chaplain of the House reflected in particular on a reading from Genesis, where Abraham bathes and feeds three strangers who show up at his door, to drive home that they are in Congress as servants.#more#

Advertisement

And as stewards. The “great gift of America to the world” is a “new way of government” nourished by “the help and the grace of God,” Fr. Conroy reminded members of Congress this morning. Three days after the Department of Health and Human Services coercive abortion-drug, contraception, sterilization mandate went into effect for businesses with plan years that begin in January — leaving the Evangelical-run arts-and-crafts chain Hobby Lobby in defiance of Obamacare’s narrow view of religious freedom — I wonder how many members heard it as an alarm.

Before singing that “God shed his grace on thee” and for brotherhood, a prayer that perhaps was most especially relevant today, given recent days, members recited a prayer written by St. Ignatius Loyola:

All too often in politics, religion is used as cover or mere flourish (keeping religion but a “safe harbor,” rather than the stuff of an integrated life, as the treasurer of Hobby Lobby describes in explaining why he and his family are fighting the HHS mandate). Here, if the words were heeded, if the petitions were honest. . . it’s not a bad way to start a session of Congress, praying together, on a campaign much longer than we typically have the patience to be diligent to.

Both Xavier Becerra (D., Calif.) and Virginia Foxx (R., N.C.) contributed to the reading of Psalm 62: “My soul, be at rest in God alone, from whom comes my hope. God alone is my rock and my salvation, my fortress.” It’s worth a prayer that the members of the 113th Congress don’t forget it.

Recommended Articles

Most Popular

On January 29, tabloid news site TMZ broke the shocking story that Jussie Smollett, a gay black entertainer and progressive activist, had been viciously attacked in Chicago. Two racist white men had fractured his rib, poured bleach on him, and tied a noose around his neck. As they were leaving, they shouted ...
Read More

Modern prophets often say one thing and do another. Worse, they often advocate in the abstract as a way of justifying their doing the opposite in the concrete.
The result is that contemporary culture abounds with the inexplicable — mostly because modern progressivism makes all sorts of race, class, and ...
Read More

This week, the story of the Jussie Smollett hoax gripped the national media. The story, for those who missed it, went something like this: The Empire actor, who is both black and gay, stated that on a freezing January night in Chicago, in the middle of the polar vortex, he went to a local Subway store to buy a ...
Read More

To understand how far left (and how quickly) the Democratic party has moved, let’s cycle back a very short 20 years. If 1998 Bill Clinton ran in the Democratic primary today, he’d be instantaneously labeled a far-right bigot. His support for the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, the Defense of Marriage Act, ...
Read More

You may have missed this news, but Chris Pratt, one of the most likable celebrities in modern American life, is now problematic to some people. But he’s not alone. Justin Bieber, Kylie Jenner, and Selena Gomez are under scrutiny now also. Their crime? They’ve attended Evangelical churches — such as Hillsong ...
Read More

In a viral exchange at a congressional hearing last week, the new congresswoman from Minnesota, Ilhan Omar, who is quickly establishing herself as the most reprehensible member of the House Democratic freshman class despite stiff competition, launched into Elliott Abrams. She accused the former Reagan official ...
Read More

Bernie Sanders, the antique Brooklyn socialist who represents Vermont in the Senate, is not quite ready to retire to his lakeside dacha and so once again is running for the presidential nomination of a party to which he does not belong with an agenda about which he cannot be quite entirely ...
Read More

Jussie Smollett’s phony hate-crime story could have been taken apart in 24 hours, except for one thing: Nobody wanted to be the first to call bullsh**.
Who will bell the cat?
Not the police, and I don’t blame them. Smollett is a vocal critic of President Donald Trump who checks two protected-category ...
Read More